Conservatives are rightly concerned that the left wins close elections by fraud.  The photo identification laws which Republican legislatures have passed are a sensible reform to make the theft of votes harder, but judges whose partisan allegiance and ideological tendencies are transparent invent reasons not to enforce those laws.

The left already buys votes by the tens of millions using our tax dollars to elect toadies who will oppose our economic interests and moral beliefs.  The left creates a vast superstructure of taxpayer-funded public schools, libraries, and colleges to brainwash young minds into becoming robots of leftism.  The left does not need or want to buy or coerce individual voters; it does not even think of Americans as individuals.

So why does the left still need to steal votes?  The left needs voter fraud because at its core, the corrupt, vain, and dumb left is just that weak.  What can we do, though, if judges step in and stop laws intended to stop voter fraud from being enforced?

There is one sure cure, which sounds draconian and maybe even weird,  but which is simple, clear, fair and pure.  We ought to revise our election laws so that Americans vote in elections the way that we used to do when all four presidents on Mount Rushmore were elected president: we ought to restore the public ballot.

The way it should happen is that when we cast a ballot in an election, we do it in the open, with a photo taken and mailing address recorded at the time our vote is cast.  The secret ballot was an Australian, not an American, creation, and the rationale was that this way, employers and landlords could not punish those who voted against the interests of the rich.  It has not worked, and it no longer makes sense for several reasons.

The issue of abolishing the secret ballot has just become very timely because a federal judge in Denver has ruled that there is no constitutional right to one.  Judge Christine Arguello is absolutely right in her legal reasoning, and conservatives -- some of whom perversely support yet another federal control over how states run elections -- need to understand that confusion and secrecy are the allies only of thuggish leftism. 

Even now, how Americans vote is no secret.  Any good political statistician can tell with very high confidence how a married white male who works in private industry is going to vote or how any single black woman who works in government is going to vote.  That is why elections are "called" with only a few votes cast. 

Moreover, federal and state laws require the reporting of political contributions.  In fact, the Federal Election Committee makes it very easy to search online political contributions from individuals and to find out not only how much money they have given, going back many elections, but also a great deal of personal information going back years.   

Do you want to find out how much "John Smith" has given in Minnesota federal elections?  A quick check shows all of those individuals, dating back to 1997 and the federal website, at no cost, and provides you the resident address, the employer, and other information to make sure that you have the correct identity.  Surely an individual or business would face more potential intimidation because it gave money to an opposition candidate than if a voter voted for an opposition candidate.

Beyond giving money to political campaigns, people register to vote, and those records are public; there are firms which actually rent this information to political organizations, like Voterslistonline.  This shows much more than just support for a particular candidate; it shows support for a particular political party.  Overwhelmingly, registered Republicans have indicated that they will vote for Romney, and overwhelmingly, registered Democrats have indicated that they will vote for Obama.

There simply is no real secrecy about who is supporting whom for political office in America, but the mystical talisman of the non-constitutional "secret ballot" insures that Democrats can steal votes.  It also means that mistakenly cast ballots of the sort that was alleged in Florida 2000 can be resolved by the easiest possible method: ask the voter whom he intended to vote for on his muddled ballot.

Secrecy in politics, including elections, is the enemy of good government.  We do not expect members of Congress or any state legislature to cast a "secret ballot" for a particular bill, and when murkiness attempts to hide the votes of legislators, we quite properly get angry.  When the Electoral College meets, would we deign to allow its members to vote by secret ballot?  Even the Supreme Court issues opinions in which justices concur, dissent, or concur in part and dissent in part.

Voter fraud became possible when vote-counting became secret.  Republican legislators have tried every reasonable plan to keep the secret ballot while also keeping the vote honest.  It is impossible.  Some state legislature -- any state legislature controlled by Republicans -- ought to restore to our nation the utter integrity of the ballot by rejecting that failed experiment known as the secret ballot.  It is the gateway drug to voter fraud.